English Symbolic power:

Special reporters and construction of journalistic prestige

Abstract

This article investigates the perceptions of Brazilian special reporters about their professional trajectories, with an emphasis on the motivations that influenced their choice of journalism and the meanings attributed to this decision. By analyzing how they narrate this experience, the study seeks to reveal not only biographical aspects, but, above all, the ways in which they symbolically construct themselves as reference figures in the professional field, considering their position in one of the most valued spheres in the hierarchy of newsrooms. The corpus of the research is composed of testimonies from 12 journalists recognized by the most important awards in the field, and the methodological approach is based on content analysis. The reflection is anchored in the contributions of Pierre Bourdieu (1996), especially in the notion of symbolic power. The results allow us to access shared meanings about journalism and identify the ways in which special reporters interpret their trajectories, expanding the debate on professional identity and the processes that construct it.